Futile, Really
by sequestial
Summary: but you close your eyes and still believe and you say 'yes i had a choice, yesyesyes i did'. //Draco Malfoy's ten steps into the unknown: something has disappeared and, yet, in the end he still does not know what it is//


**Disclaimer: There was a time when I thought that to own the HP franchise would be beneath me. That was before I discovered fanfiction. Sigh, to take it those words back, and fix the world anew.**

**A/N: 11.05.10 - edited for minor mistakes.**

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**Futile, Really**

"_If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?" – Albert Camus: 'The Myth of Sisyphus' – _

_**x: where maledicts are shivering in the pit/**_

They had led him to into his cell and they left him there. If they had looked back, they would have noticed the slight sag in his shoulders and the bend in his knees as he leaned against the walls for support. As if stone could reach in a helping hand, when stone could just as easily be shattered into crumbling pieces by a simple spell.

(still, he finds it inside to smile – at himself – at the irony, although what is ironic about the situation, he does not really know)

_**ix: though scorching heat is unassuaged  
**_

He heard nothing. This lack of sound was chilling and he was completely bewildered as to the definite location of his imprisonment. All he knew was that he was on an island. Any noise that wasn't imagined, that didn't come from rats (and where did those creatures even come from?) would have been reassuring.

(but his ears buzz with the disillusionment of his weakness, and he supposes that this is enough)

_**viii: where breath/ exhaled is woeful where black corvids scavenge**_

He had a whole year to contemplate himself. Already, the filth of the place had permeated him, like the smell of that bread he had once attempted to toast but ended up burning, and he would often close his eyes and wish for home. The stench of the meager food brought to him, and their lack of nutritious value, made his eyes water and sting and his stomach twist in rebellious pain (he would not admit he was crying because old habits die hard). Whenever he shut everything out, whenever he was too tired, a sort of peace washed over him, like sea tides at dawn, and blackness and even more silence would swirl around in a sky-less space and timeless depth. Everything was so indefinite, like stars – a combination of every one overlooked and had never been counted.

(sometimes, he knows he is growing insane and he is falling. it comes with as much certainty as anything else and he also knows that he wants to see a sunrise. he wants a sunrise so badly, damn it)

(on second thoughts, that wish is futile. the sun rises every day, but its forgiving rays never reach him and gentle waters lap outside with gravity and all that cock-and-bull: the world goes on. repeat repeat repeat)

_**vii: where they lie sullen in black slurry**_

Already he had felt a small portion of himself slipping away and the truth was – he was desperately scared – when the question arose, he could not help but wonder at what it was that was now missing. His sanity or his soul?

_**vi: powerless to speak they gurgle disregarded**_

His loss – he could not even begin to identify it, and was this a blessing in disguise (or a blight of the gods in a moment of malice)? He passed the hours by pondering over this – the guards had long stopped fulfilling their jobs – recoiling from his food until he just stopped thinking and fell into hard-won sleep.

In his dreams the silence and the darkness danced, whilst silent nubile maidens stood in the background with holes for eyes, and there was tension and there was terror and when he finally woke up, shivering and sweating in an onslaught of hot and cold, he still did not know the answer.

(he knows, however, that the soul is not eternal – so kudos for him, those Dementors will _never_ be satisfied – although he did believe in eternity, for how else could each day lead into the night and how else could each night be a night of Gethsemane?)

(but it's not true, not really, Draco's confused himself, considering he's not really religious. it will all end one day, it has to. pride sets in: he's solved one of life's greatest problems and it had not been the sense of perpetual waiting – the patience, agonizingly dreadful but soothing like a blanket for the masochist – that had made him tired…)

(stopping this train of thought again, where will he go and what will he believe in? he hasn't got anywhere to go. he thinks that _this is the way the world ends_: that muggle was right, after all)

_**v: where dolorous groans begin  
**_

And sanity was not a thing he was sure subsisted, anyway, if it was so intangible that it could not be measured by the hands that might have touched it or the minds that thought about it. In his mind, he paced. Gently, gently, while everything else slumbered in the throes of human despair, he tread slowly and softly.

_**iv: where plangent wails/ of lamentations sickeningly arise**_

Potter came to see him one time, he wasn't sure when or why (or how), but those green eyes were devoid of anything and the man left before he could open his mouth. Those eyes had never been so difficult to avoid.

(he knows they will never be on level ground, ever)

There was really nothing he could have done about it. All he could do was hope the man wouldn't assume he was suffering (although he was) even though assumptions were futile.

(we are built from them breathe them crusade for them because futility surrounds us and we will never ever _ever_ see a sunrise)

(vaguely and idly, while he is trying to sleep, he wonders what might have happened if one of their hands were shaken by the other)

(he can't imagine it)

_**iii: where no light penetrates  
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_The darkness was everywhere and nowhere, he did not know where it came from, so constricting was the eternity of its limits; he could not breathe from its viscosity._

_(there is a flash of fireworks and the lights are propelled up – high and higher – then they fall like angels and land on his face his hair his eyes his mouth and to his dismay they are not omens of redemption but splashes of mud and salt)_

_Then there was silence but nothing else and he knew (the tension and the terror and nubile maidens with their hairs for covers and satyrs with sharp nails and they all had brown brown brown eyes) that nothing was good or well._

_**ii: where Stygian squalls/ thrash every victim equal  
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Was not mud the milieu of contentment for pigs? And what, he wondered, were humans? Were they not the same as pigs, if not worse? If they were both subjects to hedonistic pleasure, what would become of him?

(he does not admit that he is crying because old habits die hard. once more he closes his eyes and wishes for home)

_**i: desperate shrieks/ and supplicant imprecations are ignored**_

The day had come. They dragged him by the armpits to that big hall and sat him on a chair which entwined golden chains around his body – he felt like a king he really did – and as that mouth came ever nearer, he swore that he could smell home again but he gazed at the hood with increasing numbness and coldness – sinking like an anchor – desperately, wildly, he looked around and there was no one at the stadium but two people and they looked at him and their eyes were brown and green like ichors of mud and death and he could not believe if they were real – were they solid were they flesh? because she was dead she was dead – and he-

(closes his eyes to surrender because he knows it is all so futile, really)

_**(nulla: the final over; everyone is out)**_

_(choice what is choice? you do not make them, instead they are obligations: because when they wait for you to speak your answer, they already know what it is: if yes, they will take it, if no, they will do anything, anything, to change your mind. (and they guilt-trip you, they will you, they will become you – entering from the outside-in – just to use a hand and force the affirmative out your mouth and make you say '_yes yes yes!_'). once that word has gone and died and changed history – even if just a speck, just a minuscule detail – there is no other fate but to adapt to the situation and you will – you will you will – because you are human. you are what others make you to be. as it happens your joy may grow with it, and when you look back to that time when you made that choice – choice what is choice? – you hold in the regret and bitterness and resentment and anger (because you are human and you are what others make you to be) and no joy will ever ever change that. but you close your eyes and still believe and you say '_yes i had a choice, yesyesyes i did_'.)_

When asked by others how did the infamous Draco Malfoy end, they said he died like a dog.

(they know they will be damned to hell and back and their souls will be raked over the coals, but somehow they also do not know. they do not know what they did wrong or what is wrong with them)

(although everybody knows he didn't die, they would wish it no other way)

(his soul rots, and his mind is eternally rolling – a boulder up and down the hill, punishment of a king – but somewhere deep deep down he lives. and he thinks he should have buried her with a kiss)

_- finis -_

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**Notes: Yes there are literary allusions, and some people which I know had problems with them, but… seriously, it's a **_**fanfic**_**. It's not meant to be original.**

**A/N: This fic is open to interpretation because, I suppose, its meaning is only obvious to the author. Because I know my intentions and don't presume I don't.**

**-S.**


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